I prefer geotherapy to geoengineering and think that the ecological systems approach of geotherapy beats the mechanistic ideas of geoengineering hand’s down every time. The book, Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase (https://www.crcpress.com/Geotherapy-Innovative-Methods-of-Soil-Fertility-Restoration-Carbon-Sequestration/Goreau-Larson-Campe/9781466595392) is probably the first academic text devoted to the subject and quite worth reading. It is one of the few things that have given me some expectation of success in slowing or even reversing climate change and the methods described will also be of enormous benefit to the poorest farmers, pastoralists, and foresters around the world.

PS: I’ve attended quite a few of the geoengineering seminars at Harvard and MIT and believe that these extremely smart people tend to exhibit very little wisdom on this subject.

My personal favorite geoengineering pipe dream is direct air filtration of CO2. Massive machines (or tons of little machines, opinions vary) that suck the air clean of the main greenhouse gas.

The upside is that this is the one kind of tinkering with the planet’s delicate feedback loops that we know will be safe. If 399 ppm was safe before we hit 400, it’ll be safe on the way back down.

The downside is, well, a hilariously long list of logistical problems that, if solved, would start yielding an even more hilariously small degree of net captured CO2, but only after a still more hilariously long period of constant operation in which the machines paid off the carbon debt associated with their manufacture and upkeep.

Doubling down, digging the hole deeper, fighting wildfire with napalm. Will still more hubris correct the harms of prior hubris? Let’s not geoengineer, let’s aim for a sustainable human population of, say, 3.5 billion souls with an economic model that isn’t based on rape and pillage of the planet.